


Add Claws to the List

by kentuckygirl



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types, Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:25:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5165447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kentuckygirl/pseuds/kentuckygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where Carmilla changes into a cat and meets Laura, both for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Add Claws to the List

**Author's Note:**

> I’m terrible at pieces that contain actual historical value and accuracy, so we’re going to pretend it happened recently. This is somewhat AU, and in my head changing into an animal for the first time would probably be painful, but would hurt less each change until it doesn’t at all. Sorry if it’s horrible, I’m testing myself for the first time in a very very long time. This was written December of last year, but I found it and figured it couldn’t hurt to share it.

Carmilla does not enjoy having her time wasted. She has all of it, time, in the world, but it simply infuriates her when it is spent in a way that holds no value. She despises coming back to Silas University again to “major” in philosophy again with professors whose opinions she does not deem worthy, with their pretentious holier-than-thou attitudes. She briefly wonders if being staked would be less painful.

Carmilla often loses herself to her inner musings as she wanders the campus forest at night, like tonight, searching for something, anything, to elicit a real emotion from her. She pauses near a tree that has that light kind of bark, that almost looks soft. She digs her black fingernails into it a bit, revelling in the odd sense of relief it brings her. It take only a moment before she rips her hand back, angry with herself for getting any sense of anything from a tree.

It was then that she heard a noise not too far off, cocking her head towards it to get a better sense of what it is. You don’t get to live as long as she by not being wary of your surroundings. It was the faint sniffing noises and tapping of paws that allows her to identify her companion as a wolf, definitely of the male variety. 

Animals never bothered her, she was rather indifferent to them, actually. However in this moment she feels the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and the adrenaline course through her system like a rapid-action injection. Carmilla silently clears her throat as she feels a lump form for reasons irritatingly unknown to her. She backs up against the soft tree, digging all 10 fingernails into the tender trunk, feeling it give way easily as she burrows them nearly an inch in.

A weird feeling overcomes her as pain starts to slowly overtake her body. In the back of her mind she recalls from another life the experience of growing pains as she matured into the body and frame she inhabits today. All thoughts are gone in a moment, as her eyes squeeze shut, she has a sick feeling that they are about to roll right out of their sockets. She holds the tree as her fingers and hands and her whole body feel like they are being morphed into a whole new shape. The pain is exquisite, similar to that of dying. She vaguely considers breaking her neck to temporarily take her out of this situation, this pain.

It feels like hours, maybe days, before Carmilla realizes she is no longer hurting. She doesn’t feel normal, but she isn’t burning and morphing and possibly dying anymore either. She hesitantly opens her eyes and is quite literally scared into action. She releases the poor tree she vaguely recalls breaking in half, and collapses to the dirty earth beneath her, on all fours.  
Horrified she looks at her hands, which are no longer hands, but paws, and her nails are replaced with claws. Carmilla has a difficult time processing that yes they belong to her. She tries to move her hands in hopes that maybe the two enormous black paws holding her up won’t obey her mind and she’s actually just dreaming a really fucking bizarre dream.

Unfortunately, the paw does as Carmilla instructs and rises to her face, bumping into something before it can touch her cheek. She feels that something, because the huge snout her eyes had unconsciously ignored also belongs to her. She makes a noise eerily similar to a whimper, startling herself once again. She tries to speak, to make sense out of this experience, but finds that all 6 languages she knows eludes her and the only thing to leave her mouth is a growl.

Carmilla cannot remember the last time she cried, but she thinks she might not be able to stop herself in this moment (because she wants to make sure her eyes can still do that, not because she’s scared or anything). Her tongue flicks against her fangs, a habit she picked up mid 18th century when she fed from live humans rather than blood bags. Her canines are as sharp as ever, but the thing that baffles her is the sharpness of all her other teeth as well. Those are not supposed to be that shape.

It’s another shuffling noise that brings Carmilla out of her head and back into the forest, where her not-body actually exists. She smells it now, the wolf. It’s closer than before, probably having heard the strangled noise that escaped her fucking muzzle seconds prior. This time it is not just the hair on the back of her neck that stands, but all along her spine too. She feels it prick up, which is odd since she didn’t even have hair there before, let alone fur. It’s an unusual feeling that she’d rather be rid of.

She does as her instincts tell her, and lets out a noise that she identifies as, yes, another growl, just a little more confident and loud than the last one. Her claws knead the earth again and the tail that magically fucking grew on her along with all these other lovely adaptations flicks in warning. Carmilla sees the wolf a good couple hundred feet away and bares her teeth, something that feels somewhat natural to her, finally.

The wolf has never seen something like her before, and it does not want to find out who would win in a fight. It promptly turns around and runs the way it came from. Carmilla listens closely until the treading is completely gone. She slowly feels herself relax, her lips slide back over her teeth, her hair, fur, shifts back into place, and her claws retreat a tad.

Carmilla has learned a lot in her 334 years of life, and she knows that shift shapers can’t exist. But she also thought the same of vampires in her past life, so she supposes maybe they could. It takes some contemplation before she decides to finally head closer to campus to maybe get a glimpse of herself to understand what exactly she is, or appears to be.

Her paws feel heavy, and she feels like a fawn learning to walk for the first time, but she learns how best to move her oddly shaped legs in a way that is comfortable and also efficient. Carmilla can’t help herself as she starts to tread a little faster, a little faster, and a little faster still, until she’s running. She’s low to the ground and her sharp eyes and quick feet allow her to dodge anything in her way. It takes seconds before she’s on the outskirts of the woods, in eyesight of the fine arts building.

Carmilla doesn’t particularly care about humans, but she doesn’t want any to see her like this. Especially when she doesn’t even know what this is. Once she has confirmed that nobody is near the area (they shouldn’t be anyways since it was after midnight when she left and the sun has yet to come up) she cautiously approached the building. She immediately goes to the nearest window she sees and takes her first look at herself.

She’s big, black, and a fucking panther. Her coat is sleek and darker than night, she is unsurprisingly lean and what she thinks is athletic looking for a cat, (she has never met a panther in person before, though, so call her biased), and her eyes are the same color as before, but the pupils are vertical and more catlike. She shifts onto her haunches until she’s sitting and just stares.

Carmilla thinks maybe this isn’t the worse thing that could possibly happen to her, but she wants to know why and how and if she will ever be in human shape again. She wonders what life will be like if she can’t change back. For the first time in a long time, she’s worried about what will happen to her. The giant cat in the mirror tilts its head to the side and its ears flatten, making it look just a little forlorn. Carmilla isn’t sure if she can truly associate herself as that creature just yet.

She hears a noise again, steps that are definitely human coming her way. She slinks down onto the grass and wishes she is human, wishes that whoever is coming her way doesn’t scream bloody murder, wishes a crowd of humans, probably the Zetas and Summer Society, don’t come looking to slaughter the fucking random panther on the loose on school grounds.

Carmilla is so scared at the possibilities that it isn’t until somebody actually touches her does she realize that she had forgotten to at least attempt to hide. She bolts upright, onto two feet, and snarls at the girl. She’s short and small and possibly the weakest looking human she has ever met.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you! I just-you looked scared and you were just laying there and you totally could have been dead-and okay you’re still glaring and you look like you’re about to literally eat me and it’s kind of scaring me-and I totally shouldn’t have tried to go all Xena and help you-I’m sorry..”

What the actual fuck. This girl is not only the size of a Care Bear, but her voice is just as high, and she may even be more annoying than one. All she needs is a pair of fuzzy ears and a rainbow shirt and she’s good to go. Carmilla realizes in that moment that when she got up, she got up as a human. The sheer absurdness of the girl made her forget the even more bizzare fact that she was a fucking panther for a while there. She doesn’t hear a word the human in front of her said, and when she does finally tune in, she is annoyed that the girl is still fucking talking and she may literally pass out if she doesn’t take a breath soon, and-yep there it is, the deep breath.

“Slow down there, Cupcake. You look like you’re having an aneurysm. Why are you even out here right now?” Carmilla asks. “Don’t you know what scary things prowl around at night?”

Carmilla circles the girl, a seductive tone lacing her voice as she eyes the the rapidly pulsing vein in the side of her neck. The time she spent as an overgrown cat has her feeling especially peckish, and the knowledge of how easy it would be to just take the girl practically handed to her is starting to overwhelm her senses. As Carmilla laps around her she breathes in her intoxicating scent, her fangs slide fast as bullet out of her gums and she unwisely pokes the points with the tip of her tongue. A quiet groan escapes her and she forces herself to stop in front of the girl and focus on her eyes rather than the thrumming of life beneath that thin layer of pale skin.

The girl hardly skips a beat, “Why are you out here? Those same scary things could target you, too. Besides, I have bear spray in my backpack.”

Carmilla does not believe this girl even exists, let alone is talking to her. “How well would your bear spray work against a panther?” she questions under her breath.

“So, now that I see you’re not actually dead or in mortal peril, my name is Laura!”

No. She cannot. Tonight is clearly a dream, or rather a nightmare. She can hardly deal with the idea that she may have been a panther 15 minutes ago, and now this human is trying to chat her up? Has she even heard of murderers, or rapists, or frat boys?

Or the true danger of the night: her.

A few seconds pass and the girls expectant look and toothy grin do not waver and it irritates her more than it should. “Go home before the creatures of the night hear you, they’re not all as tame as me.”

With that, Carmilla turns on her heel, heading for her dorm to guzzle a blood bag and sleep away this fucking unreal night.

**Author's Note:**

> So I know it’s a little different than what I normally write, and this is my first Carmilla fanfic, but I gave it the old college try. I really missed writing so I thought I could test myself with this. I’m going to start doing some more prompts, and may even continue this one if there’s any interest. Let me know what you think. - T


End file.
